


Friend and Enforcer

by Just Jo (aboxfullofocs)



Category: Thief (Video Games)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 18:16:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4069783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aboxfullofocs/pseuds/Just%20Jo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garret meets up with a friend for a final goodbye before he goes visit the Keeper Compound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friend and Enforcer

The raising of the first morning rays meant he couldn’t go home, at least, not at the moment. He was certain one of the first places Orland’s enforcers would be at would be his apartment. Garret was foresighted enough to know that would be the first place anyone would look for him. For the day, it appeared the safest option was remaining in the Thieves Highway, or turning to the homes of one of his fences to spend the night. Though he planned to pay the Keepers a visit, didn’t seem like any would willingly lend him a hideout for the day.

The sound of heavy rushing footsteps called his attention. There was only one person who was that noisy and uneasy on his steps. Garret didn’t move from his perch, even when he felt that unnatural tingle on his mind that always surprised, the presence of an enforcer nearby. It had been handy, it had been very handy when the enforcer gifted him that gift, that ability to hear him, that also meant he could hear the others, the others who weren’t that willing to be kind and had actually plans to harm him.

“Garret,” the doubled ethereal voice called. “I am glad to find you safe.”

Soundly, by his side sat down a keeper. He wore the garb of an eforcer and that earie mask they wore, to hide their visage has they had given up on who they were. Well, in theory that was of course the fact, but many, though in subterfuge, still kept small hints of who they once were. That one was one of them, even if his name had been whipped from the book of names, it was not whipped from Garret’s memory.

“I was wondering who was doing all that noise,” he Garret started. “Then I realized it was oversized rat.”

Chuckling the enforcer grinned at him. “Glad to see you well.”

“You know me, Sully, I am good at crushing hopes and dreams.”

The enforcer took his mask off and a face so familiar, covered in glowing blue glyphs and eyes that were blue infused with the power of glyphs looked at him. “I was hoping to catch you now. The Enforcer are heading to your home. Also, avoid the passageways in dark alleys, they are keeping themselves around there. In hiding, waiting behind ilusions.”

“I wouldn’t want any other thing. More challenging that way,” Garret answered. “Won’t they know I am here, since you are speaking with me?”

“I am farther enough from them for my thoughts to remain mine and hopefully, when I return, this whole ordeal will be solved and no manner of punishment shall befall me.”

“I wonder how joyous Orland will be when he figures out his Enforcers don’t work by the rules or that their binding Glyphs don’t even exert complete influence anymore.”

“There’s something odd at work here, Garret, something beyond our understanding, even beyond what the keepers themselves understood.”

“You’re starting to sound like Artemus,” Garret complained and his friend laughed.

“I quite expire to be like him. Man is old but still sneaks behind me, every single time. Where is he?” Sully asked. “I haven’t seen him since the last time he left to find you.”

“I don’t know,” Garret answered. “Why are you here? I doubt its only to warn me of the other enforcers or to ask about Artemus.”

“There is this feeling in me, I believe it’s due to the Glyphs, but something bad will happen,” he answered. “I wanted to make sure you were alright, especially after the Enforcers were sent to catch you.”

“You know me, I am quite the social butterfly,” and he grinned. “I’ll do fine.”

“This City is twisted,” he mumbled, pouting his lips and looking at the rising sun alongside Garret. “Days have been looming dark. This city is twisted and twists everything around it. It’s in the glyphs, you can feel it, can you not? The whispering, the secrets, the noise within the glyphs. Even the door glyphs are oozing this eerie noise.”

“I have felt it,” Garret mumbled. “What is causing this?”

“I don’t know, I’m an enforcer, nothing is told to me, I am only ordered. I don’t dare to ask, I don’t want them to realize I am becoming myself,” he remembered him and sighed. “I became an enforcer because I didn’t want to just _scribe_ and _study_ and _watch_ , I wanted to seek and actually keep something. Yet first I was in a half haze of my own self and I believe what is twisting the city and glyphs themselves is what is softening the bind on what makes us enforcers. Since the time of Constantine, Garret, the nature of the glyphs is twisting.”

“You should have followed my lead,” Garret threw at him, a clear I told you so. “Thieves weren’t made to be scholars.”

“But thieves are exactly what keepers are Garret, that is why you were the best among us, you still show impeccable potential! You’d be even greater than Artemus! Greater than what I could ever expire.” He remembered. “There is more to steal than just trinkets and gold, and you know that.”

Rolling his eyes and arching his eyebrows. “Information, secrets knowledge, yes. But I steal on my own accord, not under a pretentious guise.”

Sully stared at him, those empty glowing eyes locked on Garret, and he looked away. He could hear the whispering coming inside, from the glyphs used to make his friend and enforcer. Garret scoffed, to this day, something within Garret still felt betrayed. Silly, given all those years. The day Sully stepped forward and said: “Garret, I am going to take the enforcer training!” Garret felt betrayed, he never took all that foolish arguments between two kids as serious, the talks of becoming partners in crime, great thieves, was that, foolishery between kids, so why did it hurt, when his friend went towards another path.

“Where will you be heading, are you to look for me also?” Garret asked.

“Orland is not foolish enough to send me, who practically idolized you, to try and apprehend you,” he said with a laugh, that eerie sound into his voice, distorting his friends once bright voice. “I don’t think he believes any amount of glyphs will stop me from aiding you, if time comes.”

“Like now?” Garret grinned lifting one brow and Sully nodded lifting his hands. “Then what? Are you to remain at the Compound?”

“I was sent on a task by Caduca, according to Orland,” he explained and pouted once more. “Out of this rotten wound of a city. Good riddance!”

“You really do hate this city.”

“No, I came to hate it recently, since I became aware as an enforcer,” he explained. “I can see the gloom oozing from it. There is something in the heart of this city, like a parasite feeding on a heart! Too much history, too many years, many cities have fallen and raised here. The name never changes, but the Landscape does as if to hide the darkness under it.”

“Thieves thrive of the shadow.”

“Guess that’s why I wasn’t particularly good at it, I always fancied the light of the day more,” Sully mumbled, the doubling of his voice making it hard to understand.

“You’ll do fine,” Garret reassured him giving him a small nudge. “Where will you be heading?”

“Into pagan territory. To seek out a Dial of Shadows,” he answered with a shrug.

“Dial of Shadows?” Garret asked tilting his head. “And what would that be?”

“Apparently a Sundial that measures time on the dark,” he explained and shrugged. “Don’t ask. It is down on Pagan Territory, right under it.”

Then Garret watched as his friend looked away, getting up slightly he clicked with his tongue. “I am being called,” yet Garret heard nothing. “I must go Garret. Be careful.”

“I will, and you be careful also, down there,” Garret warned. “I have found more remnants of abandoned Keepers forgotten by the Compound than they’d like to acknowledge. I’d hate to find your corpse there next time I go bugging around their camps.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he reassured. And he placed on his mask, quickly, jumping off the ledge of the roof. Garret followed him with his gaze silently as the noisy enforcer disappeared into the shadows of the city.

“A parasite feasting on a heart,” he repeated looking at the sun. “Fitting description.”

After that day, after the fall of the hag, even after the Keeper order fell and after Garret took upon and apprentice. He never saw or heard of Sully again. For all Garret knew, his friend had become one more keeper corpse, abandoned in a ruin somewhere, as many others before him. Forgotten and erased from the book of Names and from the mind of people. But every now and then, in the dead of the night, when there nothing but silence, Garret could still hear a faint whisper of remnants of the keeper blood, someone far away asking.

 _Why can't I hear them anymore?_   _Master Artemus? Master Orland? Brothers?... Garret...?_

_I have been forgotten..._

A whisper brought, lulled by winds of the remnants of the Glyph energy, still dissapating and disappearing into where it came from. Eventually, Garret never heard the whisper again.


End file.
